“Now I was just a transient in the valley, a one-eyed passerby too fat for his years, and life there had the power to summon up neither the memory nor the illusion of any other, truer self. As a passerby I had a right to insist on my identity.”
A Personal Matter (1964)
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Kenzaburō Ōe 43
Japanese author 1935Related quotes
“I hate bainting, and boetry too! Neither the one nor the other ever did any good.”
John Ireland Hogarth Illustrated (1791); cited from John Ireland and John Nichols Hogarth's Works (1883) p. 122.
Later sources usually quote this as "I hate all bainters and boets!", or as "Damn the bainters and the boets too!" The saying is often misattributed to George I.
“This identity is neither coincidental nor self-evident.”
Commenting that his reconstruction of the history of text of the Bible agrees with that produced by other methods.
"Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts" (Biblica, 48 (1967), pp.243-290)
Rolling Stone interview (2003)
Context: Have you ever noticed that a small creature, like a mouse or a mole, when faced with danger, they just stop? I've had big, long periods in my life when I was a lot like that. I just froze. It was not fun, but it was what I thought I had to do. And that's how I lived, pretty much, at one time. I have a hot memory, but I know I've forgotten many things, too, just squashed things in favor of survival. The only thing missing from my life right now is what I've got, and it's peace. I have more than I ever had... and not as much as I would like.
1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)
Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
